`Amour' Brings Much-loved French Story To Stage

NEW YORK STAGE

October 21, 2002|By MALCOLM JOHNSON; Courant Theater Critic

NEW YORK — Despite some bits of jarring Anglo-American slang -- a ``nerd'' here, some ``booze'' there -- the new Michael Legrand musical ``Amour'' proves charming, or charmante, at every passage through every wall.

A hit in Paris under the title of the Marcel Ayme story ``Le Passe-Muraille,'' difficult to translate but signifying a man with the ability to walk through wood, stone or plate glass, the retitled fable of love and longing comes to Broadway under the direction of the frequent Stephen Sondheim collaborator James Lapine. The small-scale, sung-through operetta, translated by England's Jeremy Sams with considerable wit and a few clunky lines, opened Sunday night in a perfect setting, the Bijou which Irving Berlin called the Music Box.

Legrand, who has said the spirit of his countryman, Jacques Offenbach, inspired him, composed a thoroughly French score, with an original libretto by Didier van Cauwelaert. As gracefully staged by Lapine, the feeling of the piece is both satirical and tristful, with occasional bursts of bawdry, courtesy of a scarlet-crested whore, played by the Mermanesque diva, Nora Mae Lyng.

Supplying the melancholy notes are the leads, Malcolm Gets' pompadoured milquetoast Dusoleil and Melissa Errico's piquant Isabelle. He is a poor clerk, conscientious but ridiculed by the others in the office, while she has been shoved by her mother into a loveless marriage with a self-important older man who has made her virtually a prisoner. To compensate, Isabella reads of movie stars and sings of their wicked, wicked ways.

Published in 1943, during the German occupation of France, ``Le Passe-Muraille'' may be seen as a parable of Vichy life. Dusoleil is powerless and cowed by his militaristic new boss until he discovers a new gift, when he loses a key during a blackout and accidentally passes through his front door.

He becomes a subversive hero, stealing jewels for the poor prostitute , flinging purloined francs to the oppressed multitude as a kind of Scarlet Pimpernel, or Pimpernel Smith, with a sad-sack public face and a dashing Robin Hood inner man.

With a distant view of Sacre Couer upstage, the setting by Scott Pask gives a perspective view of a gray streets in the artist's quarter. At the outset, a cast of nine, most of whom take several roles, surrounds a man with an umbrella and suit patterned with a sky and clouds. The costumes by Donna Granata soon clothe the man in more ordinary, drab garb, and he turns out to be Dusoleil, in love with a woman who cannot even notice him. Here is the metaphor then: The invisible man becomes one who can slip through solid masonry and glass.

As Gets runs into trouble with Bill Nolte's fascistic, boss, he stumbles into a new ability that makes him a celebrity in Paris. The news vendor played by Christopher Fitzgerald hawks papers headlined with the mystery man's exploits, and women adore him. When he gets himself locked up so that Isabella will know who he is, two formerly disdainful office workers, played by the large Lyng and the tiny, fluting Sarah Litzsinger, fight over him.

The musical ends in a trial, with the tables turned on Lewis Cleal's ultra-conservative prosecutor, who is also Isabelle's husband. To be sure, this intemissionless show is slight, and not always as funny as it aims to be. Yet it makes for an engaging, if rarely transporting evening, as it blends romance and absurdism, with touches of the supernatural reflected in the iridescent lighting by Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer, and in Jim Steinmeyer's walls that split apart, then seal themselves for the passe-muraille. Though it may not inspire grand amour, it merits beaucoup d'affections.

AMOUR, music by Michel Legrand and French libretto by Didier van Cauwelaert, based on ``Le Passe-Muraille'' by Marcel Ayme, with an English adaptation by Jeremy Sams, directed by James Lapine; choreography by Jane Comfort; scenery designed by Scott Pask; costumes designed by Dona Granata; lighting designed by Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer; sound designed by Dan Moses Schreier; illusion design by Jim Steinmeyer; musical direction and vocal arrangements by Todd Ellison; orchestrations by Michel Legrand. Presented by the Shubert Organization, Jean Doumanian Productions Inc and USA Ostar Theatricals at The Music Box, 239 W. 45th St.